Roasting Finney

The Phoenix Preacher has taken to roasting Charles Finney. Now, I'm no great fan of Finney, but most of the shots the PP has been taking have been quite off the mark.

The #1 claim, that Finney was Pelagian and therefore a heretic, in particular, is not accurate. Quoting Wikipedia:

While some theologians have attempted to associate Finney with Pelagian thought, it is important to note that Finney strongly affirmed salvation by faith, not by works or by obedience.

Secondary Sources and Calvinistic Biases?
The PP is roasting Finney based on secondary sources and his own peculiar Calvinistic bias. The PP quotes Reformed writer Michael Horton at length but is short on actual Finney source materials. It would be interesting to read Finney himself, wouldn't it?

Finney on the Atonement
The PP has enshrined the Catholic Anselmian theory of the atonement as Gospel fact. This is typical of a particular breed of the more narrow-minded Calvinists. This satisfaction view of the atonement is not the only possible view. In fact, the view itself replaced an earlier view. What does this mean for the people who held to the earlier ransom theory of the atonement? Were they all heretics too since they did not hold the Anselmian view?

How Clean was Calvin on the Atonement?
Before pronouncing Finney to be a heretic, it might do well for the PP to examine the views of his own hero in the faith, John Calvin. Calvin's solution to the atonement question was that Christ's death on the cross paid not a general penalty for humanity's sins, but a specific penalty for the sins of individual people.

For Calvin, Christ did not die for the sins of the world, he only died for the elect. Any Bible reading Christian should be able to quickly come up with at least a dozen Bible passages which this flies in the face of among them John 3:16 which must be read in a very peculiar sense of one is a Calvinist. You see, Jesus did not come to save the world, but only the elect, they would tell us. So everyplace we see world we need to substitute the word elect in it's place.

Fans of Finney
When someone says that they are a fan of Finney, what exactly do they mean? I take it to mean that they are a fan of affective preaching, which is preaching which causes changes of heart towards God. In particular, a sort of preaching which brings people to repent and change. It probably does not mean that they agree with Finney on all subjects. This is a distinction that the PP seems unable to concede.